Those are the perfect steps to take to resolve the situation. You addressed the root causes and gave restitution-and-then-some. Great! Nick then adds,

“The original article was not clear enough that it was resolved. You have to scan the whole article to find the one where it was resolved. I’d appreciate it if you could just remove the title or cross it out and say resolved next to it. I don’t want confused customers.”

Hm, don’t think so. For one, changing the title changes the page’s URL. Also, there’s an “UPDATE: Sweet sweet resolution! Jump!” even before the blockquoted complaint letter. The New York Times Magazine, bastion of style, has a Mr. Ethics sort of section and lately we’ve noticed that they will write an UPDATE to the original ethical question with the route the reader ended up taking. Our style choices seems sufficient.

Darnit… I meant to say, if our buddy is so concerned about making sure that customers are aware why doesn’t he just update the webpage for all customers to see?

There are polite ways to word such things, and primary of all, customers can often be forgiving folks when companies don’t try and stand on a tower and pretend like they are faultless.

Here, I’ll even get them started:
— snip –
Dear Valued Customer,

Due to our unprecedented growth we had a huge amount of demand from a number of customers who use our service. Because of this, we were not able to meet many of our service commitments and for that we sincerely apologize. Your business is valuable to us and because of the issues that many of you have brought to our attention we decided to specifically rectify many of the complaints:

* bullet
* bullet
* bullet

We sincerely appreciate your business and we hope that we can continue to offer the best service possible. Lastly, as a token of good faith from now until x period of time we will be offering reduced rates on many repairs. It’s our small way of letting you know that we care.

Sincerely,
iPod Mechanic

— snip –

See? That wasn’t so hard. Why should it be consumerist’s responsibility to inform the customer when it was initially the company that was at fault. *YOU* guys fix the problem.